got rid of the nice cars and got a little volkswagen beetle, it was fine. we took care of ourselves. but i couldn't make it work so a friend of mine said do you know about aid for dependent children? i said no, i didn't. investigated it, got on the program for three years, welfare, it made the difference in getting my feet on the ground, keeping our life together. that was like 1968, 1969, those are times in california for dependent children it really made a difference in a person's life, a woman's life. i was the profile of the real welfare mom. white woman whose husband had abandoned them. that was not the profile they talk about. they talk about the cadillac queen and all of that. so when i was running for congress in a big -- i think there were nine of us running for the open seat. debate after debate after debate and i started thinking i'm so different than the -- there was two women but i was the woman in the race for sure. i thought why am i so different from the rest of this group? we're all decent democrats. it hit me, i've lived something and i wa